Summer Heat
by HelenVanPattersonPatton
Summary: A lone droplet of water slides from where he placed it on her neck down into the dark recesses of her collar in a slow decent and she wonders how soon she'll be able to return home to her air conditioning and a cold shower.
1. Chapter 1

**Summer Heat**

**Chapter 1**

* * *

><p>Heat is making them sluggish. It is making the air thick in the precinct saturated with everyday smells in unrelenting stagnant concentration, mixing with perspiration and making them unbearably irritating. A shocking few of New York's elder finest seem unflappable. Never once rolling up a sleeve, never needing to mop a brow, veterans of a time when air conditioning was a luxury and no guarantee. The rest are a quietly grumbling mess of sweat stains and as much exposed flesh as can be allowed without actually removing any major articles of clothing. Slowly the prison of closed-toed shoes had begun being slipped off under desks until the smell of well-footrace-worn shoes, feet, and the sour peppermint tang of Oder-Eaters that quit working long ago overpowered any other smell. Growing so pungent that Captain Gates - in classic red power suit with rolled up sleeves and unbuttoned jacket revealing a bright blue silk lining and matching camisole - demanded all shoes replaced to their rightful owner's feet immediately and for the rest of the day.<p>

Castle himself has his formerly crisp white dress shirt unbuttoned down nearly to his torso and sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He would remove it completely if he were not absolutely certain Gates would yell and make him go home if he wore nothing more than blue jeans and an undershirt.

He wishes he'd brought his laptop in this morning. His phone lost its allure hours ago after checking twitter, browsing his favorite writing blogs, the news, trolling the message boards of his own website, twitter, a few games, twitter again. His battery is going and there is nothing new to see. Not on the whole internet. He's seen it all. Feels like it anyway. He could be writing. Should be writing. Instead he is trying not to stare at Beckett as she squints at paperwork while he, out of sheer boredom and some strange writer quirk of need, catalogs the smells in the open room.

First is people. Not a bad smell, just people. Soaps and shampoos, antiperspirants, hairsprays, and colognes all mixed with sweat and fabric softener.

Next is coffee. Not the lovely smell of freshly made espresso but coffee from the pot that is inexplicably still in the break room despite the beautifully crafted work of Italian engineering sitting right next to it on the counter. Whatever. If people still want to drink coffee that tastes like hot asphalt then more power to them, no skin off his nose just so long as he and his don't have to drink it. It's burning. The trace amount of 'coffee' that is still in the pot, condensing and scorching on the heating element. Cooking down to a hot, bitter brew until it is inevitably poured out and fresh hell is percolated.

Then there are the office smells, office smells that are a cousin to library smells. Scents he loves. That paper and ink combination that makes that newsprint cocktail tinged with mildew. It is faint but he notices it. Ancient office furniture contributes. Filing cabinets filled with long forgotten scraps of decomposing paper. Certain things in the precinct are new. Computers are relatively new, obviously, the metal tables and chairs in the interrogation rooms and the like, but so much of everything else is old. He'll go with 'vintage' or 'well worn' but really they are old. Like the green leather sofa or his own chair. The chair's thick brown burlap covering releases a faint must that maybe only he can smell. That chair cannot have been made any more recently than 1973. Younger than he is, sure, but still older than his partner.

Last, best, is Beckett. Kate. Yeah. Sweaty Kate. Perhaps the best Kate. He knows all her smells best of all. Shampoo that is fruitier than he always thinks she would use. It's all coconut and lime and every time he gets a hint of it in the air it makes him crave a pina colada and her. That sandalwood-y body wash that has just the barest hint of spice. Eucalyptus maybe? And cherry chapstick. THE cherry chapstick. The same one that when he first noticed it years ago was smitten like he was in the 5th grade again. Like the first girl he ever kissed - really kissed, not just a peck under the monkey bars. Her lips tasted like grape soda. It appeals to him. That base part of him that is a boy with a serious crush. Beckett wears cherry chapstick. And it's hot.

"You're staring again."

He is. He doesn't deny it, only shrugs. She is stating the obvious not complaining. Beckett rolls her neck, pulls her arms up over her head, straightens her legs, feet pointed, and stretches until she's almost completely out of her desk chair. Whether she is giving him something more to stare at intentionally or not doesn't matter. It is a beautiful view.

* * *

><p>She releases the stretch with the small grunt and pulls at her button-down as she sits straight again. She can feel Castle's appreciative gaze on her. It's doing nothing to cool off the stifling heat. Like the white dress shirt that has wilted down and is clinging to his back and shoulders, molded to every dip and curve of muscle and bone. That's not helping either. She is trying not to look. She has done surprisingly well at focusing on the paperwork in front of her but the heat is getting to her, making her brain slow and focus wane. Think about something else.<p>

Beckett bores a hole in bottom of her coffee cup with her eyes. As if she does it long enough she will be able to manifest a fresh cup. A solid minute but nothing happens. She sets the cup down with a sigh and pushes back in her chair grasping the backs of the armrests with clammy fingers.

They need a murder. It is terrible and she hates herself a little for even thinking it but it's the truth. They are every one of them going to go stir-crazy sitting, stewing, in this heat with nothing to do but paperwork, the occasional deftly hidden game of solitaire, and muffled curses or prayers for the A/C repair men to work faster. She isn't wishing for a murder, honest; but if one has to take place, and statistically it must, then it _needs_ to happen in their jurisdiction. That is just all there is to it.

Ryan and Esposito aren't fairing any better by the looks of it. Their good-natured jabs at one another this morning turned to less than good-natured ones by late morning; a rare showing of a spat between the two driven only by duel frustration. Castle (more humorously accurate than she admitted to him) referring to it as a lovers quarrel. The last hour a tentative peace treaty of quiet "thanks, bro"s and "no problem, man"s has led to ruling peace. They too need some real work to sink their teeth into.

The entire precinct is unusually quiet, Castle included. It's eerie. He sits, legs loosely crossed, running absentminded fingers around the label of his half-frozen water bottle. He had the forethought to place an armload of bottles in the freezer this morning. Half an hour ago he triumphantly pulled a half-frozen bottle out and pressed it against his face. She tried not to laugh at his exaggerated glee and succeeded in only smiling wide and asking if he and the bottle needed to be alone. Her joke backfired with his muttered "maybe" and him running the already perspiring bottle down the side of his face and across the stubble on his chin, leaving fat tears of water rolling down his neck. She wondered if she licked them off his skin the drops would still feel cool on her tongue. Beckett swallowed her smile down thickly and returned to her paperwork.

That same bottle now sits creating a puddle on the coaster, shrinking iceberg rapidly melting within the plastic. Castle watches it now out of evident boredom like it is entertainment and not simply a water bottle. Every new bead of sweat it forms and builds and starts to slide down under its own weight he catches, licks them up with the pads of his fingers.

She's staring at him, at those wet fingers. She pulls her eyes away, strangles on a swallow, her throat a desert, and tries to blink the image of those moist, methodical fingertips patiently working over her.

"You okay?"

"Hmm? Yeah." The word latches in her throat, she tries swallowing again. "Yeah, just thirsty."

"Here."

He passes her the water bottle and her eyes widen without her permission. As if somehow he is offering something more entirely than just a sip of water.

"No cuties, promise."

She laughs. It's awkward and loud but it makes him smile. She takes the bottle from him but doesn't drink.

"I'll go make us some coffee."

Oh, coffee. Yes. Maybe staring into her cup did work. She is manifesting coffee, just in a different way.

As he walks behind her before snatching her cup off the desk he slicks two ice-cold, still wet fingers along the back of her neck under the sheet of tumbling hair.

She gasps and he rumbles a laugh as he walks away, as if he thinks that it is the cold that makes her gasp. As if it is a silly, harmless prank. It isn't. Oh, it isn't. Not the way the flush runs up her body and into her cheeks. Not the way her heart pounds so hard and fast that blood is a rushing river in her ears and heat floods her veins. Beckett is so eternally grateful that Ryan and Esposito are focused on being pleasantly civil to each other that they missed the whole thing. They would ridicule her until she threatened them if had they seen it.

How had Castle not seen it? How could he possibly not know at this point how his touch affects her? Was he not paying attention to her reaction when he rubbed circles into her hand that night at her apartment? Clueless man. He needs to be more careful.

A lone droplet of water slides from where he placed it on her neck down into the dark recesses of her collar in a slow decent and she wonders how soon she'll be able to return home to her air conditioning and a cold shower.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summer Heat**

**Chapter 2**

* * *

><p>They have to do something to cool off. If he sees one more bead of sweat pop up and glisten on her beautiful forehead he's going to do something she'll make him regret. Like touching her again. This time with his mouth. And maybe his tongue.<p>

It's the HEAT. And the boredom. Castle really should be writing (he is already two chapters behind on his deadline) but it's too late now. Whatever force made him come unbidden to the station this morning is keeping him here. They are in this together. He may not technically work here but he is one of them. How would it look if the going got tough he blew them off? No, he's part of their team. He stays until the bitter, sweaty end.

He just has to cool them off. Coffee is a step in the wrong direction. Yet how does one deny Kate Beckett her coffee?

He stares in the refrigerator longer than he should. He is basking in the cool air, letting it all out while it hums to keep up, but it feels too good to close the door. Nothing good in there anyway. Milk for the coffee, numerous different Tupperware containers with names scrawled on labels and post-it notes, (a particularly well worded, if vulgar, note threatening any misguided soul who touches the tinfoil clad plate of homemade tamales made by Vazquez's abuela), mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, chocolate syrup, hot sauce, all. Wait, chocolate syrup? He can work with that. He pulls that and a tray of ice out and begins his task.

* * *

><p>"What is this?" She knows full well what it is.<p>

"It's coffee."

Beckett peers with greater horror and skepticism than she means down into the red solo cup.

"Just try it."

She doesn't like iced coffee. Not really. It's unnatural. There is no good reason Beckett can come up with for anyone to prefer it over its perfect, naturally molten hot form. An abomination really.

Castle levels her unrelenting eyes. Fine. It is more the principle of the matter anyway. Desperate times call for desperate measures. She acquiesces with a swig that knocks shifting cubes of ice against her teeth.

This is sweet. Chocolaty but not overly so and still strong with coffee. Good coffee. And cold. Wonderful icy fingers glide cool down her throat. It's heavenly and she hates to admit it.

"It's good."

"You doubted me?" He raises a hand to the feigned wound over his heart.

She did. She shouldn't have. He has never failed her with coffee before, or in any other way for that matter. She doesn't answer what she assumes is his rhetorical question and busies her mouth with another swig.

Mm.

"That good, huh?"

"It's okay."

"You moaned."

Did she? That was meant to be an inside sound. He smiles smug, twinkling eyes at her. That teasing, dangerous, bright blue glint that makes her want to punish him just a little for digging so far, too far, under her skin.

"In your dreams, Castle."

"Oh, there too." He says it low and honest, no teasing there. Darkly saturated with knowledge of all the ways he thinks about her. It makes the heat that had been receding start to wander back up toward her cheeks.

He holds her eyes locked in his own, pulled there with intent earnestness dipped in latent desire. It is unflinching, as it always is. His gaze as solid and sure as he always is, so sure of her. She tries to be brave, to share his apparent unflinching assuredness, and she does until it is too much and she has to blink and look away.

Castle exhales softly and it sounds far too much like a sigh in Beckett's ears. She does this to him. Banters and teases and insinuates and never follows through. She's not a tease. She is not, not really. But she's never had anyone _waiting_ on her before. Never would she have guessed (nor would she still admit) that Richard Castle possesses the patience of a saint. When it comes to her at least if nowhere else. This all with only the unspoken breadcrumbs of her encouragement to nourish him, all the things she knows but cannot give to him.

"Thank you, Castle, for the coffee." She raises her preposterous red plastic cup at him as he returns to his seat and pairs it with a smile. The best one she can muster, one that breaks the plane of her lips and infiltrates her eyes. If she cannot say it maybe she can at least show him.

"Of course."

Of course.

* * *

><p>Ryan interrupts her smile, the increasingly familiar one that unfurls slowly and radiates in her eyes like golden sunlight. "What are those?" Ryan speaks and it curls in, scurries back into its hiding place where she keeps it until he can coax it back out again.<p>

Esposito pops up behind his partner and frowns down at the cups in their hands.

"Iced coffee?" It's not a question. The severity of Esposito's frown only makes it come out of Castle's mouth that way.

"You make those?" Ryan's adopted Espo's scowl.

"Yes?" Dammit with the lilt. He mentally blames Beckett's still smiling eyes for throwing him off his game. He is ill-prepared for an interrogation.

"Only enough to make the two?" Esposito pinches his brow together until it forms a line from his forehead down to the bridge of his nose.

"No?" He husks out, breathes. "No."

"Well?"

"Uh," what? "Want me to make you guys one?"

Ryan, all white teeth and crinkled blue-eyed smile, "Gee, Castle, that'd be great."

Sarcasm, fine. At least he and Espo are talking again. Talking and ganging up on him but talking none the less. This must be what they feel like when he and Beckett fight.

Speaking of, Beckett is sitting back in her chair, fingers slung over her lips in an effort to hide her mirth. The hand hides nothing, mirth pouring in waves out of her eyes, shoulders tight with unshed laughter.

The boys stand unmoving, unrelenting eyes on him until he moves from his spot.

He squints his eyes at Beckett in reproach for encouraging them as he brushes past on the way back into the break room. Castle makes it no further than the door when he hears the softly murmured exhalation of her laugh. It may be at his own expense but the sound is like fresh air in his lungs. He pulls the last of the still frozen ice trays out of the freezer with a smile on his face.

* * *

><p>Castle makes iced coffees until he runs out of milk and solid bits of ice, seven in all. The first two go to Ryan and Esposito. The remainder all but one goes to various other detectives who show interest. The last one, number seven, Castle saves. Not for himself, and not for Beckett, no, not for her.<p>

With a straight spine and perhaps overly confident stride he walks across the floor and knocks three solid raps on her door.

Beckett can't see Gates from where she sits, can only glimpse Castle's face. A nod of his head, a slight smile (the one he keeps in check when there's a bigger one wanting out), and he is out again, closing the glass door back behind him.

He nearly swaggers back to their desk.

"Well?"

He beams.

"Well come on, what did Gates say?"

"She said, and I quote, "Well Mr. Castle, it appears that you can make yourself useful," end quote." Still he beams.

Beckett's brow furrows. This is par for the course. Perhaps less acerbic that she could have done but still less than high praise.

"And?" She shimmies her hair at the question.

Castle plops in his seat hard enough to make it shriek back half an inch across the hardwood. "And then she smiled."

"She WHAT?"

"Gates smiled. At me."

"No way."

"I told you, Beckett, no one can resist my charms."

"It's taken you eight months." She smirks at him. Does what she can to keep his ego in check. Gates' dislike, which Kate still finds bothersome and inherently wrong, is still useful in keeping him a bit more humble.

"Worked on you didn't it?" Castle raises a brow in challenge.

"Yeah, only took you three years." What an epic lie. Six months tops. He had her easily in six months. Two if you only count liking and don't include trust. They have come a long way since then but, yeah, six months.

"But I got to you."

"Yeah, you've got me." She nearly whispers it and immediately regrets the words and how completely she means them. She has tipped her hand again. She can see it in the fraction his eyes widen. It's too much. She cannot keep saying things like that if she doesn't plan on following through with it right now. She cannot keep telling him just how he has her, only him, when she is still unwilling - or, not unwilling - unready to show him.

She is being unfair.

But he does have her. Castle.

He smiles at her. Her own Beckett smile. All pursed lips and shinning eyes. Love filled. If this is the way she looks at him she doesn't know how he stands it.

She wants to kiss him. She wants to know what that smile tastes like. She has to brace not to reach out and actually do it. Just to touch him.

Beckett has to look away. If she doesn't she is afraid of what will happen. And the unknown is almost as scary as what she knows. She can feel him shifting in his chair and wonders if he has any idea just how hard this is for her too. To want and still wait.

That thought sounds bitterly self-indulgent in her head but it is the truth. She wants him just as badly as he wants her. However the potential for their greatness is not as necessary as the stability of their partnership. Not when she needs him, can't risk losing him like so many others. He is essential, her partner first and always. Doesn't mean she doesn't want him. She just wants to be sure they will be alright. Be certain that they will make it through together.

She risks a glance at him, gazing down at his shoes, hands folded in his lap. Waiting. Patiently. Where he has been for years.

It flares anger in her chest. She is the one afraid. She is the one keeping him held to her with an iron grasp but at arm's length. She says she wants to be better, wants to be more, but then holds on to her fear like a security blanket. Beckett is never going to be completely sure of anything unless she has faith.

And Beckett has faith in this man.

No more. She will wait no longer. She lights a match to the parts of her brain screaming no. The safe parts telling her just wait a while longer, something will happen, a change for the better, a miraculous healing of her heart. To hell with it, she'll burn it all.

She wants him.

Now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summer Heat**

**Chapter 3**

* * *

><p>With a start that rolls her seat back a foot, Beckett shoots up and stalks away from him. Castle would think it was something he said but he wasn't the one doing the saying. She was. In not so many words, but in her way, he <em>thinks<em>, Beckett just said she was his. He will let it be, chalk it up to "his partner" and nothing more. But she said it not him.

She makes it to the doorway of the break room before turning a wide-eyed glare his way and jerking her head to follow her. He does and she closes the door behind them.

She closes both doors. Uh-oh.

She peeks out the interior window, his eyes following hers to Gates closed door, to Ryan and Esposito's empty desks, before she pulls the cord to lower the Venetian blinds, turns the wand to close them. Uh-oh.

He stands as far away from her as he can and braces. She is about to tell him something he is not going to like, he knows it.

He doesn't want to hear it. "I didn't do it."

Kate barks out a strangled laugh he has never heard before and it burns in his chest. She effects the same posture as Ryan around day nine of his juice fast - all feral cat. It scares the shit out of him.

"Yes, Castle, you did." Her voice tinged thick with bitter laughter.

This is going to be bad. He needs to just face this like a man.

She fidgets and her hands tremble. Beckett sees him notice it and shoves a shaky hand in her hair. He'll face it if it will just make her stop scaring him.

"Hey, whatever it is it's going to be okay." She laughs again, this time accompanied with what looks like a genuine smile. "Alright, now you're starting to freak me out."

"Castle."

She says it low and behind a curtain of hair that makes it sound a lot like "come here."

His feet oblige until he's standing in front of her, head ducked down trying to find an angle to her face that isn't all shadows and downcast eyelashes.

He doesn't feel the burn of her fingertips pressed into his forearm until she flinches and jerks them away.

Beckett is out one door before he ever hears Ryan come in the other.

What the hell just happened?

* * *

><p>"What was that about?"<p>

Castle closes his mouth to the phantom contrail Beckett's sudden departure whipped in the air. "I - I honestly don't know."

"Okaayy," Ryan rolls the words out in a smirk.

Castle fashions the best Beckett Glare he can muster, a shabby imitation of the original. At least Ryan takes the hint and moves along.

"Ah.. we've got a couple boxes of phone records to go through, helping out the guys on four. Just brought 'em up. Esposito's setting up in the conference room. Just thought I'd let you two know." He lets the last three words fall in a slow sing-song punctuated with a pop in time with the rock of his loafers.

He's out the door again before Castle has a chance to parry. He feels gotten, off kilter. An un-spilled insult waits on his tongue to get Ryan back for that smirk. Not really Ryan's fault walking in on.. what? Walking in on something. But he'll have his moment to sportingly pay Ryan back. A well placed jibe about leprechaun ancestors should do the trick. He's so sensitive about these things.

No, it's Beckett that has him out of sorts. Has him off balance. It's not with worry. Not with the apprehension when she led him here. All that fell away when he got a good look at her face. It's the glint in her eyes the moment they met his in the nanosecond before Ryan came in and she swept fevered fingers from his arm.

It was want. Like a child deliciously eying a candy bar her mother expressly told her she couldn't have. It was want-some and naughty and it was directed at him.

He thinks.

Maybe she was messing with him. Maybe the heat and his own desires made him see what wasn't really there.

He wants to see her. See if he can find that glint still in her eye. Touch her. He needs to talk to her. First he has to find her.

* * *

><p>Beckett, if she is still here, must be in the only place he can't go. He's looked everywhere else but does not possess the gumption to knock on the door to the ladies room. If she's in there she'll come out eventually. He rounds back around to her desk, home base, and notices her phone lying there. She didn't go far then.<p>

The outline of Esposito and Ryan's heads lift and drop with the rise and fall of each page they read and mark, shadows disoriented through the glass partitioning the conference room from the bullpen. Or maybe that's a wave of heat rising between them casting illusions.

Might as well make himself useful.

Castle pulls the cell from his pocket as he pushes the door open into the room. It wheezes slowly to a close behind him, off kilter like himself, cutting off any air flow that might breathe life into the room. He jams the thick end of a yellow highlighter under the door and the hardwood floor forcing it open. Brings up Mu Shoo Palace on his contacts. It's only a few minutes after three o'clock but the anemic egg salad sandwich from the sandwich cart downstairs at eleven is long gone.

He launches into their order without asking what the guys want, he already knows. Ryan lifts a head to interject but before he can open his mouth Castle is already asking for another order of short ribs and extra hot mustard for the spring rolls. He places his phone back in his pocket, grabs another highlighter off the table, this one bright blue, sits at the head of the table.

"Okay, what are we working on?"

Esposito hands him what looks like a ream of paper and a list of a dozen phone numbers.

"When you come across one of those numbers, mark it."

He pulls the cap in between his teeth and commits the numbers to memory. Piece of cake.

* * *

><p>The jog down the stairs and back up did nothing to make her feel anything other than more stickily hot. It did not stop the hum running in her blood. It did not quiet her own voice in her head screaming at her for being an idiot. Of all the times and all the places, she loses her cool and almost mauls Castle in the break room in the middle of the day when anyone, Gates included, could have walked in. Had Ryan been 30 seconds later he would have gotten an eyeful. And that is bad. BAD, Kate.<p>

Still steadying her breath from the exertion, she catches a glimpse of him when she rounds the corner. Blue-jean clad ass sticking up in the air as he's bent, shoving something under the conference room door. She can't go in there. Not yet. She can feel it still etched on her face and if she walks in that room right now not only would he see it but everyone else would too.

Beckett tries pulling her features in a believable scowl as she wheels back and makes for the bathroom at a clip. Splashing water on her face, and maybe the rest of her skin she can get to, can't hurt.

The half rusted faucet knob turns with a put-upon squeak. She lets the current of cold water rush over her hands willing it to seep past the skin and into her veins before shaking them out to run them across her face.

The shock of her own face in the mirror when she raises her fingers and her gaze is startling. The too-pink tint to her skin, the rapid rise and fall of her chest with every breath, the slightly frizzed, wild tangle of her hair all can be blamed on the heat. The heat still in her eyes tell their own story. Their shine betrays her.

She runs cool, wet fingertips along the tender skin under her eyes. Knocks wet knuckles against her brow, a swift palm across the back of her neck, around and down, down, until her fingers slip past the V of her shirt and press against the knotted tissue between her breasts. It is a newly formed touchstone. She has been willing herself to look at it, touch it. Remind herself that every mar and pull to her flesh is evidence of her chinking the armor of her invisible aggressor.

When her eyes find their twin in the mirror once more the heat of lust has been overrun with the molten steel that pools within her. Vigilance that is forged in the fire that licks at her lungs and constricts her heart. The familiar burn sucks up all the oxygen in her blood smothering out anything else. It settles, refocuses her. Makes her think for the first time in an hour of something other than Castle and all the things she can't have but wants. It almost makes her forget about taking risks with her heart.

She's got this.

Beckett steadies herself, calms the drums beating in her chest. Dabs the moisture off her face with a paper towel, swipes it across her lips in an admonishment of what they were going to get her into. Threads a hand through her hair. No way damp fingers will help tame the frizz but it feels good to push it out of her face in a losing battle for control. With a slant of fresh chapstick across her mouth and a smoothing of her shirt she ready, put back together and ready to face her team. Her partner.

* * *

><p>The pulse of her clicking stride announces her before she enters the room. Against all instinct he trains his gaze to remain on the paper. He's been working on limiting the amount of immediate, bright shining affection tunneling from his eyes to her when she enters the room. When they are not alone that is.<p>

She brushes past his chair and the smell of freshly shed sweat and soap curls into his personal space disrupting his carefully cured focus. It's sexy and it really shouldn't be. It's just that it smells like her but intense and muskier. It conjures all the ways he can think to make her sweat.

She pulls up a spot by the window next Ryan and to Castle's right. Close enough to reach out and touch her. Close enough that if he dipped a hand under the table he could rest it on her knee. He wants to.

"What do we got?" Her voice is low and steady, measured and whatever was lingering there before is gone now.

Castle risks a look at her profile out of as much habit as need while Ryan hands over a fresh stack of papers from the box. Midafternoon sunlight fractures the room, casting bright beams, pinpoints of intense heat, and sweeping shadows. It hits her hair and makes the flyaways dance. The little curls forming around her face and neck, newly finger-bisected waves, all breathe life and sing. Dust particles hang, trapped in the light shrouding her head, and in unison they shine a sparkling make-believe gold.

He doesn't notice that she has turned to him until she taps her nail on the tabletop to get his attention. She extends her hand to him. He'll take it.

Highlighters. No. Right. He has the pack of highlighters.

He pulls the first one out without looking and hands it to her, unable to look anywhere other than the way light slashes through her irises. It destroys all the brown masquerading there leaving only green earth and snaking rivers of gold.

Beckett smiles in the face of his blatant gawking, slow and dark, a rich chocolate smile in the face of the vanilla light, and Castle realizes he has done what he didn't want to do. He is wearing awed desire permeated with love. He feels it radiating off his face and the realization burns in his cheeks in what he is too manly to label a blush.

He ventures a glance at the boys. Dead to the room, thank God.

Beckett absently spins the highlighter around on the table, face shifted again like a shadow. Eyes no longer in the light now betraying brown again, cast past his shoulder, and he realizes his mistake. He lays a hand over hers to still her fingers making her jump a nearly imperceptible amount before pulling the pink highlighter away from her lazy grasp. Trades it for the green in the pack and slides it back under the bridge of her fingers.

Her teeth bare and eyes crinkle bright in a silent laugh.

"You two done making eyes at each other or do we need to give you some private time?"

Esposito gets the pink highlighter right in the neck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summer Heat**

**Chapter 4**

* * *

><p>She is equal parts thrilled and irritated to pull the container of crispy chili chicken out the bag. How the hell did he know that? At least a dozen things on the menu that she orders depending on her mood and he somehow picks the one out of twelve for which she has been longing.<p>

Beckett tries to not make it about her. Castle's just observant. He got the boys order right too. But Esposito and Ryan order the exact same thing every time, trusty as a clock. Somehow he just knows what she wants.

Although, judging by his panicked innocence in the break room earlier he clearly doesn't know everything she wants.

The first bite crunches and burns. Ugh. It is so good.

She scoops in rice expertly with the v of her chopsticks, digs down coating it with violent red sauce, snags a morsel of succulent chicken clinging to a fraction of whole chili. Heat tingles bright in her sinuses opening her up. She will not make it halfway through the container before her nose starts running. It's worth every bite. Beckett grabs another napkin and reaches for a spring roll.

* * *

><p>Page after page, marked and stacked, tell the passing of time as clearly as the sun vanishing from the window. The light is still there dimly. Only shining still for the buildings tall enough to stand and reach it where it rests on the horizon. The rest of the city lingers in deeply cast shadows awaiting streetlamps and the artificial light of nighttime.<p>

For the first time today without unbridled heat pressing against the brick and through the windows the temperature dips. It is stuffy and overly warm but no longer stifling. There is finally air to breathe.

The laughter filled jabs and chatter accompanying their meal ebbed with the sun until they are left with only the flutter of paper and the faint but steady squeak of florescent ink. Gone is the agitated wait for something, anything, to happen replaced with the eye-straining menial task. It's good. It settles them. Occupies their minds and keeps their eyes from staying glued to the clock watching the minutes slowly tick.

The five o'clock hour had long come and gone when they resolved to stay just a few minutes longer to finish. That was nearly an hour ago. Time bleeding further into six, now threatening seven, but finish they do. As soon as the last line is marked Ryan and Esposito leave in a flurry of "I've got to meet Jenny and her parents for dinner" and "I gotta take this call. See you tomorrow." In a flash they are left alone in the near darkness of the conference room, never thinking to flip the light switch.

"What do you think that was about?" Castle queries as he replaces the neatly arranged stacks of paper back in their bankers boxes.

"What do you mean?"

"Esposito and that phone call. He had that 'I've got a dirty little secret so I'm going to try and act extra cool about it' look on his face."

"Did he?" If he did she missed it. Beckett collects the stacks from the opposite end of the table, tapping their unruly ends straight, and hands them to Castle.

"Yeah. Same look he had when he and Lanie were first secretly doing.. ah, seeing each other."

She mentally berates herself for smirking at his verbal misstep.

"Has Lanie said anything to you about them getting back together?"

"Um," Beckett forces the misshapen corrugated lid on the box. "We haven't really talked about it."

"I thought women talked about all this. She never said anything to you about it? Not even after the wedding?"

"I hate to burst your bubble, Castle, but we do not live in an episode of Sex and the City."

That's kind of a lie, well, not lie – oversimplification. Misdirection. She and Lanie used to talk about these things, frequently and sometimes even over drinks. But for every question Beckett asks about Esposito or dating or _anything_ personal Lanie asks three more about her and Castle. It has been that way for years and that was never a problem. But now there are real things to tell and Kate would prefer to side-step relationship questions altogether than lie to her friend. Or, even worse, tell her about feelings and very real undercover kisses and confessions that bled out on too green grass and _secrets_. So the status quo for the last year is Beckett keeps her mouth shut and Lanie shoots her all too knowing looks when they venture too close to anything personal.

Castle looks genuinely disappointed. He picks up one nearly full bankers box, she picks up the other. Beckett nudges her box into his to get him moving. He doesn't. "What is it?"

"Just - I thought they'd be back together by now."

"That's sweet that you care about our friends so much but sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to. Not everyone gets the ending you would write."

"I know. I know that. Honestly, as long as they're happy then I'm happy. I just sort of always pictured it being just the six of us."

Castle finally accepts her nudge and heads out the door toward the elevators. Beckett can't make her legs follow.

He mustn't realize what he said, what he _implied_. Just the six of them forever. A team and the family that they already are. The three _couples_.

He stops on the other side of the glass. "You coming?"

Beckett forces her legs to hold true and catches up with him. Castle smiles a soft, clueless smile and she relaxes a fraction, thankful for the lack of any embarrassing (revealing) backpedaling.

Castle slows beside her, cocks his head. "Did you just say I was sweet?"

"No." She never breaks stride.

Beckett shifts the weight of the box to rest on the front of her thighs as she leans back against the elevator wall. The metal rail presses cool across the small of her back through the damp knit shirt clinging to her. It feels heavenly.

"So, Beckett. What was it you wanted to talk to me about in the break room earlier?"

The doors slide shut on her panic.

* * *

><p>All the air disappears from the suspended cube as it plummets. He's being overly dramatic and letting his wordy imagination run away with him. However Beckett hasn't taken a breath since the doors closed and she hasn't answered his question. It feels like oxygen-less free-fall.<p>

She doesn't turn toward him; offers no eye contact.

"It was nothing." The lie falls half hidden behind a swath of curled hair as if it will filter it somehow on its way to his ears and make it sound more like truth. The elevator dings and opens on the fourth floor. She bounds out like a jack sprung from its box before the doors are completely open.

He girds his body, takes his life in his hands, and fires a well-aimed shot in the dark.

"Nothing doesn't make you close the blinds."

The tiny hiccup in her step is his only indication she heard him.

Good.

* * *

><p>She doesn't say a word or spare a look his way. They hand the records back over to the detective running point, which he accepts with hurried gratitude, and they make their way back to the little airless box of woe.<p>

Castle's fingers itch to press the emergency stop button, to cage this beautiful, wild creature long enough to get a straight answer out of her. Only he doesn't push the issue and they never share direct answers and he has had a belly-full of being trapped with a sleek animal with a lust for his blood. He's had enough of that to last him the rest of the year and doubts she would appreciate the comparison.

The offbeat tap and grind of her heal gritting into the linoleum floor scrapes in his ears, grates at his nerves. All the things she isn't saying, holding on her tongue just behind the dam of her teeth, pulse loudly in the air.

He won't say anything else; unhappy with the knowledge that he will probably never truly know what it was she was so close to revealing. No matter. He made his point. Made sure she knows she isn't getting away with anything. Cornered her king.

Check.

The doors ding and open. Beckett doesn't rush to beat him out, allows him to go first. Which he does, but pauses to wait for her, always preferring to walk with her, never in front or behind.

Beckett sidles next to him, lets the column of her throat work roughly on a swallow, up and down, before making a very blatant point to find his eyes. Finally he sees it all there. That same look from before, of want brewing cloudy and dark.

"I wasn't going to _say_ anything."

She leaves him there, words like a foreign language seeping into his brain, awaiting translation.

She wasn't going to -

Oh.

OH.

Checkmate.

Only who has checked whom?

* * *

><p>Whatever brave, idiotic wave that overcame her and made her think it was a good idea to tell him <em>anything<em> deserts her the moment she looks away and heads back for her desk.

She thought she was ready (enough anyway) mere hours ago to start something; dip a toe in. Might still be ready. Maybe. She just wants - No.

Why did she do that?

She doesn't almost kiss him and then_ tell_ him that she was going to kiss him. This is not her. She is not reckless. She does not risk her heart and she does not want to damage his. Now it is out of her hands. It rests in an unhappy valley of some relationship purgatory just outside her grasp. What do they do now?

Beckett half expects him to sputter, or grab her, or make some outlandish, if not unfounded, innuendo. Something. He doesn't and she wishes he would. She would know how to deal with that Castle. The one who says nothing and hangs in limbo halfway in the bullpen lingering by the elevators where she left him, expressionless, is new and slightly terrifying.

He simply waits while she quietly freaks out, tries slowing the race of her heart. Straightening her desk and shutting down her computer doesn't give her nearly enough time to pull it together and leaves her without a pretense.

It is time to go.

They both aren't looking, heads down, as they walk back for the final time of the day to the elevators. It is like the world's most anticlimactic, infuriating game of chicken. Four years with them both toeing that line of ever-growing unspoken tension and never stepping over it.

She is tired. Completely over it but doesn't want it to end. And even in her own head that sounds insane. She wants the same but better. She wants more. She just wants –

Him.

He has infiltrated every aspect of her life without her consent. He wrote his way into her life, bullied his way into her job, insinuated his way into her family history, her pain, worked his way into her partner, loved his way into her heart. She doesn't know what to do now with all the formerly vacant space filled with him. Beckett doesn't remember a time without him, knows it must be there but can't get her fingers on it, and never wants to let him go.

Castle fills ever corner of the lift just like her life. He permeates her every inhalation and breathes her every exhalation. The presence and proximity arc in her nerve endings and when two of his knuckles brush the soft skin of her fingers it must alight blue as a Tesla coil; electric current raising every hair.

Once, twice, the back of his fingers brush until they still and loop hers, warm and thick around the length of fine, graceful bones. He strokes up and down. Slowly. Up and down the pen-worn, inside skin of her middle finger.

It is intimate. Erotic. If only he would –

The doors open to a bright-crisp, ionized jolt in the air and for a moment she wonders if their electric charge is spilling over and filling the lobby – but no. The camera-flash of lightening in the distance illuminates the front doors. Thunder pounds like the overworked muscle in her chest.

They come undone, fingers slipping away.

Beckett is drawn to it; always has been. She hurries past the security desk and pushes open the heavy double door out into the summer rain.

* * *

><p>Urgent, torrential sheets of rain ground the city streets and send pedestrians running for cover. It does nothing to help with the heat, only amplifies it making the world steam like wet wool draped over lava rock. It intensifies every smell of exhaust and street meat, the essential New York perfume, and couples it with a shock of briny sea. An all too faint lilt of clean, cool air rides on the whispered promise of a breeze then vanishes.<p>

For a moment he thinks Beckett is going to dart out in it. Raise her arms to the heavens and let it soak her through. She runs an arm around one of the many stone columns that stand, interrupting the steps, on the façade of the 12th and shimmies around to the other side.

Castle can't see her and needs to. He slides an arm around the stone less gracefully than she, sticking out a little too far past the overhang. A few fat, warm drops drip from the cornice and hit his head. The water trickles down to his scalp and itches. He cranes a few inches more to try and see Beckett. She has nestled herself in the shadow of the few narrow feet between columns.

"What are you doing?" The sound of his voice barely carries to his own ears over the pound of rain.

He can only see a sliver of her face and doesn't think she heard him.

There is no more room to move without putting his foot down one more step which would soak him in the process. His hand is starting to slip.

"Watching."

Her voice is as strong and vibrating as the pop-up thunder shower and he leans in just a little nearer. He wants to see the look in her eye that accompanies that timbre of her voice.

"Mind scooting over? I can't hold on much longer."

Beckett casts her first glance in his direction and chuckles low in her throat at the sight of him clinging precariously to the slippery rock.

"Yeah, yeah. It won't be nearly as funny when you have to drive me to the ER. Move over."

It doesn't wipe the smirk off her pretty mouth but she does shift over so there is just enough room for him to slip around next to her angled on his side.

"So what are we doing?"

"We're waiting, Castle." Beckett doesn't look his way when she answers, her gaze transfixed in the fading twilight by the rhythm of the rain. She clearly loves it. How has he never seen that before?

She is so close. Too close. Close enough that he no longer smells the city and the wet. Close enough that she is the only thing filling his vision. Lovely.

He shouldn't push back the shock of ever-curling brown hair to see more of her profile, to see the soft, delicate skin where her jaw bone meets her throat - like he shouldn't have caressed her hand before. Shouldn't run his fingers up the back of her neck into the extra dark, silky-fine hair there. But he does.

The lengthening shadow of lashes across her cheek is the only indication she closes her eyes.

"What are we waiting for, Kate?"

Ricocheting mist painting them where they hide slows, only for a moment, and then stops altogether. Just like that it's over. Rain gone from the heavens as if it were never there. Pavement slicked black and steaming the only evidence it had ever been there.

Be it by his hand or their own special gravitational pull, he finds her, still in profile, so close to him he can rest nose against her temple, brush his lips against her ear. It is intoxicating. He makes the most of such a rare, precious moment and presses a kiss to the hollow of her cheek. It is more desperate than he intends but being so close is making him desperate. He can't help it.

Castle reluctantly pulls away. He cannot go far surrounded on three sides by brick and stone and clay. Resting his head on the rounded edifice he squeezes his eyes together and swallows the building disappointment anticipating the moment she pulls away.

"We're not waiting on anything anymore." Her words reach him the same moment her fingers do, both softly brushing his face.

He expects her to kiss him. The way her fingers play across his jaw and the flicker of her eyes on his mouth ignites hearth-fires and holocausts. Only she doesn't. Heavy lidded eyes slowly rise to his and the wanton desire is etched there but she doesn't move.

She is waiting on him now.

Fingers circle her neck and he presses a thumb lightly in the shallow of her throat, runs it in circles. It thrills and courses through his veins to have her struggle to keep her breath even as heat flares in her eyes.

"Nothing?" He teases the impatience from her and laps it up.

"No, Castle. No more waiting."

He kisses her slowly. His lips work lazy and deliberate. Too long have they waited to succumb to petulant urgency. Meticulously he laves over every inch of her mouth, never wanting to miss the tiniest detail or sensation.

She presses into him, pushing his body flush against the column and threading strong fingers into his hair, Kate alive and eager. She tries but he will not let her speed him up, change his course.

He knows what he wants. He wants all of her. He wants to savor it. To stow away that look in her eyes the moment he touched her. He wants to store this feeling in a jar. He will save this their summer heat for a cold, sunless winter day. Warm his hands on the moment they burned brighter than the sun.


End file.
